Present Over Perfect

feels good to be good at something, to master something, to
control something when marriage and intimacy often feel
profoundly out of our control. And so, little by little, we
tiptoe away. And before we know it, there’s a cavern
between us, easily filled by someone simpler, better suited
to us, someone, honestly, who hasn’t had to put up with us
for quite so long, someone who still laughs at our jokes.
Part of the reason I was so interested in my conversation
with that man on the ferry boat was because it sounded so
familiar to me—like the story I’d heard from so many dear
friends in the last couple years. I don’t know if it’s a mid-
thirties thing, or a married-more-than-a-dozen-years thing,
but it’s happening all around us. And when you look at the
story in reverse, you see a thousand little choices that
yielded the wreckage: one or the other retreated, for
whatever reason—hurt or fear or any number of things, to
self-protect or to hide. And then the distance is created. The
distance seems to almost always create space for another
person, and then there’s a whole new level of pain and
violation. But when you look back at the months and years
before the third person, it’s first a story about distance.
And when things are hard and painful and barbed at
home, what a lovely thing it is to be loved at your work,
right? What a lovely and dangerous thing. What an easy
escape, into people who think you’re great and work that
makes you feel valuable. I can master my laptop in a way
that I cannot master parenting. I can control my publishing
schedule and my deadlines in a way that I cannot control